Ore Carriers

This section covers the four iron ore carriers built for the North Yorkshire Shipping Co which was a joint venture between Bolton SS and the British Iron and Steel Corporation, BISC(Ore).

Their names echoed the "R" naming convention of the Bolton fleet but, instead of artists, North Yorkshire towns were to be the inspiration.

Each one entered service on a 15 year charter to BISC(Ore) and brought cargo back from many ports either side of the Atlantic such as:-

Almeria

Murmansk

Narvik

Nouadibou (Mauritania)

Seven Isles

Vitoria

A 12 hour load and 24 hour discharge was the norm with a pretty uncomfortable voyage in between.

1st Hand

The sea going staff did not particularly enjoy working on them:

'Dull, repetitive work, going out in ballast, and ore is a heavy cargo which makes the ships throw about with something of a pendulum motion'.

Captain Copping

The superintendents didn't like them either:

'They were a headache, no time to do repairs and you never knew which port they were going to'.

Donald Grierson - Engineer Superintendent

With a ten second roll when loaded, they were not at times the most comfortable of vessels. When rolling into a bow or beam swell, the roll could be suddenly stopped by the by the incoming, the result being that articles not secured would follow their previous trajectory and leap into the air. After seeing flying hot mugs of tea and chart room paraphernalia scattered, we quickly adjusted.

One of the most alarming sights on the carriers was to stand at the end of the accommodation tunnel and see the whole length of structure "corkscrewing" in any sort of bad weather, but we were told that if they didn't do that they'd break up. That was O.K. then !

Once loaded 13.5 K tons of ore at Seven Islands in 1 hour and 20 minutes.

Bob Mawson - Deck Officer late 50's and eary 60's

All had a 4 cyl Doxford main engine, the first three having 2x oil-fired scotch boilers supplying steam auxiliaries and Rievaulx being the last built had Ruston diesel generators powering electric auxiliaries.

Getting  rid of the scotch boilers transformed this class of vessel completely.

Gone was the soot blowing, boiler blow down, chemical testing and dosing.

No more smell of black oil and graphite, condensate and steam.

If only the first three had been the same!

The Doxford main engines also had their own engine driven pumps giving them total independence from their auxiliary pumps (while they were running) and could continue running at full speed even during a blackout, which was quite surreal.

But then again if they'd all been like Rievaulx we wouldn't have had the dubious pleasure of experiencing this lot:-

Steam generators were by Belliss and Morcom with twin cylinder compound engines similar to this one now in Bressingham Steam museum

Steam pumps were usually Weir direct acting Simplex

or Worthington Simpson (simplex or duplex).

Steam winches for opening the MacGregor hatches were very similar in appearance to this one which has obviously seen better days. Engineers 'Field Days' (2 hours unpaid overtime, either before or after watch) spent fixing these things after being wrecked by the combined efforts of the sea and crew was all part of the job.

Does anyone have info of other types of machinery?